SS Amplegarth (1918)
The SS Amplegarth began life as SS Denewell, a British steel screw cargo steamer built in 1910 by William Pickersgill & Sons Ltd of Southwick, Sunderland. She was launched on 23 August 1910, completed that September, and measured about 106.2 metres long, with a 15.3 metre beam and 7.2 metre depth, at 3,707 gross tons. By 1915 she had become Amplegarth, registered at Cardiff under the Ampleforth Steamship Co. Ltd, before later passing to Canute Steamship Co. Ltd. A solid coal-carrying steamer, then. No ballroom, no grand staircase, no nonsense. The Channel rarely asks for glamour before it ruins your day.
On 10 May 1918, Amplegarth was on passage from Dunston-on-Tyne to St Nazaire with a cargo of coal when she struck a mine laid by the German minelaying submarine UC-71, commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Walter Warzecha. She sank about 1 mile west-south-west of Dover Harbour. The best Cardiff shipping summary I found records no lives lost, which is a blessedly rare line in a First World War wreck note. For divers, this is a proper Dover war wreck: a big merchant steamer, a working cargo, a UC-boat minefield, and a loss right on the doorstep of one of the busiest wartime ports in Britain.
